Update (Sep, Friday 25 at 15.50): The Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X/S has appeared on the Microsoft Store (click here) and is available to pre-order. The cost of the device is higher than the rumours suggested – it’s £219.99. We also know what the retail packaging will look like, thanks to Seagate’s item page:
The original story (Sep, Thursday 24): In the age of digital downloads and increasingly GB-hungry video games, there has been a lot of focus on the impending next-gen consoles’ memory capacities. Both Sony and Xbox have had the upcoming consoles’ specification debated and considered for some time now.
Many commentators have noted that games pushing 100GB are par for the course, meaning that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S will fill up pretty quickly with even the most modest gaming collections.
One thing that’s never really been up for debate is that external memory expansions were going to be hitting the market. Both the Sony PS4 and Xbox One have official Seagate expansions available, and many compatible third-party options.
Both companies have confirmed that the new consoles will support external HDD and SDD drives, however, as BGR report, the main issue has always been around the speed at which externally stored data can be accessed by a console.
The most readily available drives don’t have the throughput to be able to match the extreme speeds of the internal memory. This bottleneck will have a detrimental effect on the load-free, seamless gameplay both promised and required by the hyper-engineered next-gen.
Now, via a leak discovered by ResetEra (because that seems to be the only way to get information out of Sony and Microsoft in 2020), it’s been confirmed that the Xbox Series X/S will be getting a dedicated storage expansion card. This specially designed device will be provided once again by Seagate and will provide the speeds required by the consoles.
The price for the Xbox Storage Expansion Card was initially said to be $202, or £159. Reports and online sightings have subsequently suggest $220, or £203.
The Xbox Seagate expansion card will provide users with an additional 1TB of storage. This will double the capacity of the Series X. Those looking to purchase a Series S may be particularly pleased by this news, as the all-digital console only carries 512GB of memory.
Seeing these prices, those hoping to use the drive to boost their Xbox Series S may be concerned. The combined cost of a Series S and official expansion will be £452 - that's more than the higher-spec Series X.
As of yet, there’s been no word about pricing, size or manufacturer of Sony’s PS5 memory expansion.